To ask when empty, to pour when full
To Ask when Empty, To pour when Full Text by Raqs, “On the aestheticization of Politics”
Foreground Manoeuvres
This essay investigates how the “foreground” of late capitalism—defined by ubiquitous automation, productivity triumphalism, and competitive edges—both shapes and erases social landscapes. Through a two‑act framework, Raqs first analyses the seismic shifts in the dispersal and connections in theproduction process and technology deployment. The second act examines the “production of residue”: which expressed itself with […]
The necessity of Infinity
The Necessity of Eternity recounts what must be one of the most exciting yet neglected exchanges (Al-As’Ilah Wa’L-Ajwibah/Questions and Answers) in the intellectual history of the world.
The Blood of Stars
The Blood of Stars invites us to think about the relation between the presence of iron, a fugitive from the stars, sleeping deep inside the earth and the veins of warm-blooded mammals.
The Emperor’s Old Clothes & Hollowgram
The Emperor’s Old Clothes (2017)Shortlisted for The Fourth Plinth on Trafalgar Square 3D printed PLA Plastic and cast polyester resin What, would the departure of power from a Trafalgar Square pedestal look like? The Emperor’s Old Clothes is an answer to this question in sculptural form. What we intend to place on the fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square is […]
The Translator’s Silence
Fragments of texts by three South Asian poets, Faiz Ahmed Faiz, Rabindranath Tagore, and Agha Shahid Ali, are presented in Urdu, Bengali and English, in lenticular 3D prints
Utsushimi
Utsushimi Site-specific installation at Suzu City, Oku-Noto Triennale, Japan (2017 – ongoing) Materialized Architectural Drawing in Illuminated Wireframe Utsushimi (Tr:double image/token/emanation) traces the outline of a now-defunct railway station in the Noto Peninsula of central Japan, capturing its essence through a ‘drawing sculpture’ that renders the station’s form as an exoskeleton. This skeletal emanation stands slightly […]
Undoing walls
Can a “dysfunctional” wall structure be imagined so as to question the original intentions of a Government?
Communard Biscuits
A hard tack biscuit from the Paris Commune of 1871 was 3D scanned, 3D printed, a mould made and facsimile biscuits baked.
We are Here But is It Now?
In a dialogue between a deep‑sea diver and a shipwrecked rhinoceros, this text reframes the present as a drifting, submarine horizon—one that arrives unevenly across contexts and often eludes capture, unlike the more predictable arc of the future. Drawing on maritime and temporal metaphors, the essay assembles a cast of figures—from the wise to the […]
Propositioning The World: Raqs Media Collective and the Shanghai Biennale
An Interview with Raqs on curating the 2016 Shanghai Biennale and how it fits into their curatorial practice. An interview with Raqs, by Maya Kóvskaya, first published in the September/October 2016 issue of Yishu: Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art.
As if by design
Text by Raqs, Published under ‘Superhumanity’ for the 3rd Istanbul Design Biennial, 2016
An Ephemeris, Corrected for the Longitudes of Tomorrow : Speculations on the Orbit and Motion of Objects and Processes in Contemporary Art, today, and tomorrow.
Text by Raqs, Published in ‘Art History in the Wake of the Global Turn’, Edited by Jill H. Casid and Aruna D’ Souza, Clask Studies in the Visual Arts, Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown & Yale University Press, 2014
Sarai Reader 09: art as a place / The Exhibition
Work 10am-5pm Over a Week, in the Space || Call People for Lunch Discussions if You Want || Develop a Critical Lexicon and Vocabulary for Contemporary Art || Involve More People || Work by Yourself || Work Together With Others || Invite || Perform || Initiate || Create Punctuations || Pair || Make a Set […]
Will you, Beloved Stranger
Will you, Beloved Stranger? is a performance piece for two readers in a designed setting featuring a rendition of two bodies of poetic work — those of the Israeli poet Yehuda Amichai (writing in Hebrew) and the Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish (writing in Arabic)
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